Indian Muslim women’s campaign to occupy public places and defend democracy alone
Last week I was thrown out of a graveyard in Mumbai. When I got home, I decided to pray fathiya Above my father’s grave. But realizing that there was a ‘woman’ in the cemetery, the imam of a nearby mosque interrupted my prayers and sent me out of the final resting place. The subject of women going to cemeteries is a controversial topic in the Sunni practice of Islam. One hadith (prophecy statement) indicates that the Prophet forbade women from visiting the tombs. A second statement holds that the prohibition was lifted and all believers were asked to go to the cemetery – to remind themselves to return to God.
Beyond my own experience, this struggle came to the fore years ago when the Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai banned women from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. The ban was lifted by the judiciary, but it remains a matter of dispute between the temple leadership and the management.
More about discomfort
My argument here is that this debate has less to do with religious rules and more to do with the deep discomfort that comes from seeing Muslim women in public places in India. Unfortunately, most of the voices claiming to represent Muslims politically or socially in India are male. Even in the electoral arena, it remains a historically under-represented group. Despite being 6.9% of the Indian population, a 2019 report showed that Muslim women have only 0.6% representation in the Lok Sabha.
In the case of personal law, after the instability of Shah Bano’s decision and the passage of the Weak Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, the Islamic leadership of the country had an opportunity to treat the abuse of the legal provisions as a Was. internal matter. The Muslim community has a rare, in-ground communication system for Friday prayers and khutbas (sermon) that precedes it. This platform is yet to be used for addressing, assimilating and compelling the community. Of course this is not helped by the fact that most of the doors to the mosque remain closed to women.
a narrative aid
As the critic Zia Us Salaam argues, the exclusion of women from prayer and the community is a profound injustice and results in stupidity (malicious ignorance). The country’s largest mosques claim that they do not have space for women. Women’s spiritual and social needs play a second role in this stage to masculine comfort. Beyond the female question, these conditions are detrimental to the social fabric of Indian Islam as a whole. The systematic ouster of women from their rightful seats at the table creates the perfect craze for the narrative that ‘Muslim women need to be saved’.
The legend was propagated by the far-right, helping to tarnish the image of a barbaric, ruthless Muslim man. It also legitimizes the invocation of Uniform Civil Code as an act of defence. As media person Sonali Verma points out, the announcement of triple talaq, while a pro-women move, is steeped in communal politics. The invisibility of Muslim women means that there is an artificial deficiency in which many bodies (with many purposes) claim to speak for them.
as a target
The puzzle is further complicated when Muslim women actually occupy public and political space. With the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and the Shaheen Bagh dharna in particular, the scene of the purdah Muslim woman became synonymous with inaction. With these protests, the double bond of Muslim women was recognized. lack of Papers (documentation) has a disproportionate effect on gender lines, and calls for freedom (freedom) are manifold. The visual allegory of Muslim women protesting in the name of the Constitution and democratic principles shatters many mainstream imaginations.
The result has been brutal. The protesters sitting on the dharna were told available (for sale) and described in derogatory terms. From depictions as objects in need of powerful invisibility and defence, the right-wing has turned to a hypersexualization of Muslim women. Videos and songs have been seen in online campaigns that encourage abuse and violence against Muslim women. Prominent personalities often face abuse and hate messages. This took a particularly crude turn with Sully Deals (in 2021) and its successor, Bulli Bai (in 2022), where images of influential Muslim women were ‘auctioned’ online.
to influence the right
Recently, we can see this through the Karnataka hijab row, where young Muslim girls are not allowed to enter their premises wearing a veil. A section has argued that this is to prevent ‘regressive/religious practices’ from seeping into secular spaces. The confluence of regression with Islamic practices, is a direct violation of the fundamental right of girls to education. Excluding Muslim women from secular places, unless they literally remove the markers of their faith and identity, is acrimonious. It serves no purpose other than to propagate a malicious narrative that pretends to protect Muslim women on the one hand and deprives them of the means to fabricate their own story on the other.
Thus the inner fear that the occupation of Muslim women in public places causes embarrassment has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are released out of the insular, community safety net and in turn face slander by the rising right. The lack of a middle ground here means that Muslim women are forced to occupy spaces at two ends of the spectrum – one that requires the compromise of political agency and the other that requires exclusion from their community. needs to be accepted.
This sad state of affairs bodes poorly for Indian democracy and its political axis as a whole. In a country with many intersecting identities like ours, no issues or situations exist in silos. is an obligation to attend erga omnis (an obligation for all), and damage to it is degenerative to a secular democracy. A non-representative leadership is a breeding ground for polarization, the spillovers of which affect us beyond gender and religious lines.
Here my dedication is sad yet hopeful; The campaign of Muslim women to occupy public places and defend democracy is the only one. However, in the current political climate, it is necessary to fight this battle and protect an equal, democratic India.
Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel is a Rhodes Scholar in Residence at the University of Oxford. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government. Views expressed are personal
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